Tag: Glasgow

Posted on February 8th, by admin in Projects. Comments Off on Glasgow: Symphony of a Great City

In February 2012, the University of Edinburgh joined forces with the Glasgow Film Festival to create a special event entiteld Weimarvellous about the cabaret movement of the Weimar Republic. As part of this, Susan Kemp collaborated with a group of sound designers known as Synchresis to create Glasgow: Symphony of a Great City, a live film event that took its inspiration from the legendary 1927 film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City.

Fiona wrote a series of poems entitled Twelve Polaroids: Glasgow and Environs to accompany the film.

Review of ‘Outside the Narrative’ by Tom Leonard: Etruscan Books/Word Power Books

I vividly recall the first time I read a Tom Leonard poem. It was Yon Night and it was yon man (my dad) who showed it to me. The poem tells of a bitter-sweet confluence of emotions: joy at seeing Celtic cuff Leeds at Hampden and the misery of unrequited love: “ana wuz thaht happy/ana wuz thaht fed up/ hoffa mi wuz greetnaboot Celtic/anhoffa mi wuz greetnabout hur”. It’s funny, poignant and has the pitch perfection that is Leonard’s hallmark, but what drew me to it was the langwij in which it was written. Reading it was like watching the first episode of Taggart. Glasgow flashed past and suddenly I saw: excitement (glamorous cop shows, modern poetry) wasn’t something that happened elsewhere. Excitement could be mine.

The days when printers refused to print Leonard’s poems and they were banned in schools are long gone, but he continues to rail against the dominant narrative and to poke fun

Outside the Narrative, a selection of poems from 1965 to 2009, is dedicated to all those excluded from the excitement. The title poem, a triptych that ends with a white rectangle obscuring the words, … Read More »

Posted on October 10th, by admin in Projects. Comments Off on words 2008

words 2008 was a collaboration based on new writing from the Creative Writing MLitt programme at Glasgow University. It was organised by Lucy Adams, Susan Kemp, Fiona Rintoul and Adrian Searle in conjunction with public artist Nicola Atkinson.

The focus of the collaboration was the words 2008 exhibition, which took place at the Mitchell Library from 9-13 September. The exhibition was unique in that it took the normally solitary process of writing out into the public domain. By so doing, words 2008 sought both to promote new literary talent in Scotland and to engage a wide range of people with contemporary writing.

The exhibition’s goal was to involve as wide a cross-section of the public as possible with the creative process and with the writers, who were on hand to share the skills they’d learnt at the Edwin Morgan Centre with the wider community through a series of prose and poetry workshops, readings and writer-in-residence slots.

In addition, the exhibition featured a half-hour film about new writers directed and produced by former BBC producer Susan Kemp. There was also a reading room featuring an extensive collection of as yet unpublished work by new writers on the Glasgow University MLitt, a writing room where … Read More »

Posted on October 9th, by admin in Books. Comments Off on Let’s Pretend

Fiona’s story ‘One hundred flowers’ appears in the short story collection Let’s Pretend.

I used dollars my family had sent to buy coffee and chocolate from the Friendship Store, and we had a celebration. Grandma Gao spat the coffee out, but she patted me on the arm as she pottered off on her tiny ruined feet to squat by the door and smoke the Kent cigarettes I’d given her. It was an acceptance of sorts.

From the Glasgow University Masters course in Creative Writing comes this collection of brand new writing from some of the most exciting and fresh talents around. Thirty-seven writers have taken (in)fidelity as a theme to offer up 37 remarkable short stories.

“[These] stories form as strong a collection as I’ve read in a decade or more. Wit and wistfulness, black skies and blue, laughter and tragedy all are on display here.” Ian Rankin